On camera

Many local bloggers gather every Thursday at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for weekly chats (and dinner). Tonight, a video crew from "Nightline" showed up, as the bloggers discussed on- and off-the-record discussions in the post-Eason Jordan world. Lisa reports:

... The sound guy had this enormous specialty criss-crossing harness, which held two rackmounted…things….with many blinkenlightzen, and of course, like an audio shepherd, he had his staff, topped at the crook with a boom microphone. The whole staff could be shortened with a flick of his wrist. The camera guy had a Betacam, which he held in the crook of his arm like a guitar. I'm sure it weighed a ton, but he held it like it weighed about the same as a paperback you'd pick up at the airport. A handsome man and a handsome woman, the producers, were also there, standing in a doorway. ...

David adds:

... It's a bizarre experience. The big Sony camera gets swung around to point at the person speaking, changing everything. It's attention made physical.

I'm worried because the conversation keeps talking about the question in terms of the tiny handful of bloggers who view themselves as doing some type of journalism. That's how the mainstream media already tends to view us. I hate to see us reinforce that. ...

Shimon was not happy:

The only logical conclusion that a crew from ABC Nightline can draw from yesterday's Berkman Blog Meeting is that bloggers are a bunch of screaming monkeys jockeying among themselves to produce a statement so quotable it will be on television.

That is the spectacle we experienced last night, when a record number of people converged on the Baker House conference room to discuss issue of blogging and on/off the record. It was an interesting topic, but seeing this many people demonstrate their overarching desire to get their mug on television was just... depressing. ...